


La plume de ma tanty

by Aeshna etonensis (GMWWemyss)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: A few bits of your actual French, And all the usual Styles styles, And of course Cheshire ... cheese, Baking, Bananas, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Humour, Irish fond exasperation, M/M, Midlands equanimity, Snark, Which is American for 'sark' (but not for the other Channel Islands), Yorkshire truculence, comedy of manners, headscarves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 19:51:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4112881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GMWWemyss/pseuds/Aeshna%20etonensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Louis has Dark Suspicions of Whatever It Is Liam Is Up To.</p>
            </blockquote>





	La plume de ma tanty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Niler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niler/gifts).



> For Niler, in what you might consider retaliation, or reciprocity, depending on how you choose to look at it.
> 
> Set, obviously, in just this very moment in time and through to, oh, mid-August.

* * *

‘I don’t like it,’ said Louis, in ominously nasal tones. Harry and Niall exchanged a glance. When The Tommo’s voice was, metaphorically, wearing a flat ’at and had a whippet on a lead, Tyke truculence was in the offing.

‘’Zat, love?’ Harry’s inevitable response to Louis’ strops was to be soothing, and slow, and husky, in voice and manner alike, like treacle dripping into a tub of barley.

‘Payno. He’s vanishing from hotel at night. And all sorts.’

‘But....’

‘Ah, now,’ said Niall. ‘It’s none so aisy for him, and Zayn away.’

‘Happen it isn’t,’ Louis was yet sharp. ‘Or happen it may be summat else.’

Harry knitted his brows to a … crewel … degree which might have passed for a new headband. ‘He’s.... Payno’d _not,_ yah? I mean … there was this old Darby and Joan couple, yah, in HC, always doddered in to Mandeville’s – she liked the cottage loaves; he liked our scones – they’d always stop after Mattins or Evensong, walking back, always popped into Davies the Butcher first, yah, it being opposite S Luke’s … plain, his scones, he never liked them with fruit, really, I think he found those too – well, no, maybe it was _her_ didn’t care for –’

Exasperatedly, although not without affection, Louis tossed a banana at his lover to shut him up. ‘I’m getting to bottom of this,’ said he, warningly.

Niall and Haz alike felt that that pronouncement, as Louis pronounced it like a doom, might as well have ended with a ‘bah goom’, really.

* * *

There was security, of course, always. And stylists. And roadies, naturally. And, when the lads could manage it, friends and family flown out, or in. And – when the lads could not resist the demands imposed on them by the Nazgul of management – beards, once in a way, if only for Liam as such just now. And then there were occasional hangers-on, milling about on the outskirts of the entourage.

Louis, with a wild look in his eyes, grabbed Harry and Nialler and dragged them into the green-room. ‘I _told_ you summat’s up.’

Haz looked puzzled.

‘With Payno!’

‘Yah, I know you did, love, but....’

The Tommo rolled his eyes. ‘That French bloke who’s sucking up to Liam! Luc!’

‘Look where?’

Louis gibbered – and redoubled his gibbering when Niall guffawed and slapped an implausibly innocent Haz on the back for a well-played bit of Tommo-baiting.

* * *

‘Oh, terribly sorry,’ said Louis, in a tone which wholly negated the sentiment. ‘Am I interrupting something?’

‘Not at all, Monsieur,’ said ‘that French bloke, Luc’, politely rising to go. Louis glared at him, remarking, not for the first time, that he was lean and sleek and dark-polled and rather too like the absent Zayn for anyone’s peace of mind.

Liam was having none of it. ‘Actually, y’ are.’

* * *

‘Hsttt!’

Nialler and Haz sighed, and allowed Louis to drag them onto the idling Bus One.

‘I _told_ you! I _warned_ you! He’s vanishing – Our Liam – with that Frog, every time! God, I hold no brief for Malik right now –’

‘Ah, shut yer mout’,’ said Niall, ‘ye’d hold his briefs any time, if it would not get y’ killt entirely by Haz, by Payno, _an’_ by Zayn. Jaysus, ye’d _sniff_ t’em if y’ dared.’

Louis simply stared incredulously at Niall.

‘Besides,’ said Harry, slowly and with that air of Utter Impartiality and Fairness which made Louis (and Niall, and, for that matter, Zayn, wish, regularly, to throttle him, however much they loved him), ‘it’s none of this his doing, yah? I know you say there are some things a man simply won’t do, no matter what a contract requires, but –’

Louis ignored this, and burst out, now that he’d recovered the faculty of speech, ‘I-hold-no-brief-for-Malik-just-now _but,_ as I was _saying,_ Liam is quite simply having it off with that French bugger, and we must – something must be done!’

It was Haz’ turn to stare incredulously, as at the suddenly mad. ‘Liam? Our Liam? Cheat on Zayn? Are – are you feeling quite well, love? Niall, make some herbal tea, and see are there any biscuits, my Boo wants a nice cuppa and a l- –’

‘What he wants,’ said a voice from the back of the bus, ‘is sense – sense enough to see if anyone else is on a bus before he makes it his secret lair, anyroadup.’ Liam ambled forward, as Louis edged behind Harry as behind a shield; he was trailed by a Luc torn between incredulity, worry, and amusement. ‘I’m not having an affair with Luc, you doughnut. I’m learning. He’s tutoring me.’

Harry wisely put a large paw over Louis’ mouth.

Liam sighed. ‘Mind out of the gutter, Tommo. Everyone nowadays wants to know a second language to English.’

Niall began to crack a truly outrageous joke in Spanish, but Louis, having got free of Harry’s silencing hand, overrode him. ‘Don’t you think you want to learn English, first?’

Liam looked tolerantly upon him, despite the scepticism in Louis’ voice and raised and Clary-esque eyebrow.

‘But, M Tomlinson,’ said Luc, earnestly, ‘I am not retained to teach M Payne the French language. I am hired to teach him C++, and to code.’

Even Niall raised an eyebrow at _that;_ Louis wasted no time in rejoinder: ‘In that case, Liam, don’t you think you want to learn to _type,_ first?’; and, turning to Luc, he added, ‘Whatever he’s paying you it can’t be enough – have you seen his tweets?’

* * *

Not that Louis had accepted the claims advanced on Luc’s – or Liam’s – bare word. He had insisted on sitting in on several sessions, until he could no longer bear the boredom.

‘They’re actually bleeding coding,’ grumbled he. ‘Payno is actually learning to code.’

Niall and Harry both put their hands out.

‘Oh, no,’ said Louis, vehemently, ‘I never _wagered_ on this –’

‘Pay up,’ said Niall, uncompromisingly. ‘Y’ did do by implication.’

* * *

Luc’s tuition was evidently complete, and he had vanished. Liam continued to vanish or to lock himself away, presumably (when not having Skype sex with Zayn) coding.

It was beginning to prey on Louis’ mind. It wasn’t, after all, as if any discernible _music_ software were forthcoming, and God only knew what else _Liam_ (of all men) could possibly be doing with his new learning.

It was on 17 August that The Tommo finally got the secret out of Liam.

‘Well, it’s done and dusted now,’ said Liam, reasonably. ‘So I don’t mind telling you. It was a simple little program. A bot.’

‘A. Bot.’

Liam smiled, at his crinkliest-eyed. ‘A bot.’

‘And _now_ you can reveal it.’ Louis’ voice was flat. Niall and Harry exchanged the glance, half-amused and half-alarmed, of men on the verge of twigging to it – and Foreseeing Consequences.

‘Mm-hm.’

‘And did bot work, lad?’

‘I’d say it did.’

Louis spoke quietly and tightly, biting each word. ‘Payne, are you telling me you devised a bot to stuff the ballot boxes for us in the Teen Choice Awards?’

‘Oh, no, _no,_ ’ said Liam, shocked. ‘’Course not. That wouldn’t ha’ been right at all.’

Haz and Nialler were beginning to break down, sniggering.

‘Did you, then,’ asked Louis, teeth clenched, ‘build a bot to stuff the ballot boxes – _not_ for us – in the TCA?’

Liam grinned, with puppyish excitement. ‘Yes! And it worked so well! Zayn got –’

With an inarticulate cry of rage, Louis launched himself upon that same Zayn’s lover, as Harry bit into his own sleeve to stifle his laughter.

‘Ah, Chrisht,’ wheezed Niall, himself overcome by glee as Liam held a flailing Louis back one-handed: ‘ _Voici: la plume de_ Tommo’s tanty!’

 

* * *

 

 


End file.
